ADL Audit Records 21-Percent Increase In Anti-Semitic Incidents In U.S.

Anti-Semitic incidents rose by 21 percent in America from 2013 to 2014, the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) annual audit of those incidents revealed.

ADL’s audit, released Monday, recorded 912 anti-Semitic incidents in 2014, up from 751 the previous year. The figures marked what ADL described as “the first time in nearly a decade of declines where the overall number of incidents has substantially risen.”

“While the overall number of anti-Semitic incidents remains lower than we have seen historically, the fact remains that 2014 was a particularly violent year for Jews both overseas and in the United States,” ADL National Director Abraham Foxman said, singling out the fatal pre-Passover shootings in the Kansas City area by white supremacist Frazier Glenn Miller, Jr..

ADL said in a press release that last summer saw “a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents” during the 50-day war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza.

“Anti-Semitism manifested on the fringe of anti-Israel movements during and after Israel’s Operation Protective Edge as Jewish individuals and institutions became the targets of anti-Semitic rhetoric and acts of vandalism,” said ADL.

New York experienced 231 anti-Semitic incidents last year, the most of any U.S. state. Other states that saw the most anti-Semitic incidents in 2013, according to the audit, included California (184), New Jersey (107), Florida (70), Pennsylvania (48 incidents), and Massachusetts (47).